


Blood is thicker than water

by DarthGarou



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Blood and Gore, Gen, Terrifying Tolkien Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-30
Updated: 2017-10-30
Packaged: 2019-01-26 21:42:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12566824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarthGarou/pseuds/DarthGarou
Summary: Finrod's last moments in Sauron's prison.





	Blood is thicker than water

**Author's Note:**

> My entry for the sixth day of Terrifying Tolkien Week.

There is not much else besides darkness.

Somewhere behind the doors of their cell, torches are burning, a fraction of their orange light squeezing inside through a crack beneath the door. Faint steps echo through the stronghold, as does keening and moaning of prisoners and the snarling of wolves. A distant scream is cut off in the middle. Ash sticks to the walls and fills the air, staining the insides of their lungs as they breathe.

Finrod shifts in his shackles, their rattle bouncing off the walls and distorting in the heavy air.

“Are you awake?” he asks softly, gazing into the darkness at Beren.

Beren stirs and struggles to sit up, his movements strained with exhaustion and hunger. He sighs before he speaks. “I wish I was not.”

Pain that has nothing to do with his wounds jabs Finrod in the chest. He regards their bleak surroundings for a long moment, contemplating his words. There were a thousand other routes they could have taken and of them all, he has chosen the one that has brought them into Sauron’s pits.

“What hope is there for this foolish quest now?” Beren whispers in a hoarse voice before Finrod can say anything. “I knew I would end up so,” he gestures to his surroundings in the darkness, “the moment I had agreed to it.” He buries his face into his hands, too weak to even sob, but Finrod notices his tears in the darkness.

“Do not lose hope, my friend,” Finrod says, what grace and strength left in him poured into his voice. His eyes gleam in the darkness, but that only serves to remind Beren of the glowing eyes that have crept into their cell accompanied by long fangs and snarling breath.

“We might find deliverance yet.”

Beren laughs, the sound of it hurting his throat. He sees the hurt in Finrod’s bright eyes. “And where could we possibly find deliverance, I wonder? Will the werewolves turn on their lord Thû and tear him to shreds? Or do you, by any chance, hope that Thû himself might think of mercy, and will burst in our cell to unlock our shackles ere we are lost to the fangs of his beasts?”

“Someone might be rushing to our aid as we speak,” Finrod tries, his voice weaker than before. The darkness around him thickens, soot licking at his skin as he leans on the wall to rest.

Despair worms its way into his bones, strengthened by Beren’s words.

“Yes,” Beren agrees, something maddening passing over his face. “I hear its claws clicking on the crude stones of the hallway. Venomous spit trickles down its yellow fangs.” He looks Finrod in the eye and upon seeing his countenance, Finrod feel like losing all hope as well. “I can almost feel it breathing down my neck.”

“This is not you,” Finrod whispers.

“The two of us are what’s left of the quest, and this is what is left of me,” Beren cackles, the crackling sound swirling in the thick air and deteriorating into bestial howling. He wraps his arms around his weakened body and hides his face.

Finrod does not respond, focused on a faint sound in the darkness instead.

“I hear the claws, too,” he whispers, his voice shaking and strained. 

A beast snarls in the shadows, eyes burning with a fell fire flashing in the lightless cell. Beren barely has time to lift his head and notice the best before it leaps towards him. Its fangs flash like unwanted stars on a clouded sky. Finrod tears his shackles from the wall and jumps on its back, his arms closing around its throat with a fierce cry.

The sound stirs Beren into moving as far away from the thrashing pair as he is able. His eyes remain fixed on the werewolf and the Elf. Like a desperate beast, Finrod bares his teeth and bites into the beast’s neck, tearing out fur and skin and meat.

Warm blood lands on Beren’s skin and he shudders. And yet he stares at them still, transfixed on their struggle.

The werewolf howls in anguish and rams Finrod into a wall. His grip loosens and it turns to go for his throat, tongue hanging out of its jaws. They close around Finrod’s forearm and crimson stains his golden curls.

His eyes burn when he snaps and tears off the skin on the werewolf’s snout.

It keens and lets go. Finrod pounces like a desperate beast and sinks his red teeth into its neck once more. Beren flinches at the sound of tearing flesh and agonized whines coming from the wolf, but Finrod is unrelenting in his assault.

The beast sags in his hold, life ebbing out of its pitiful and crimson-soaked form. Finrod’s face is painted scarlet, bodily fluids dripping down his chin and staining his hair. Drops of blood shatter into crimson mosaics on the floor.

Beren inhales to speak.

There’s is a snapping of jaws. Fangs sink into Finrod’s flesh and rend it asunder in the last desperate jerk of the beast’s head. The werewolf snarls in satisfaction, twitching where it fell, Finrod’s blood dripping from its yellow teeth and black lips.

Finrod is lying collapsed next to it, gasping for breath with a gaping wound in his chest. Beren avoids looking at it as he crawls to Finrod’s side, touching his shoulder when he settles down next to his dying friend.

“Beren?” Finrod tries weakly, blood gurgling in his throat. Beren doesn’t blame him for using his name this time.

“I’m here,” he croaks, resting one shaking hand on Finrod’s bloodied forehead.

“My time has come,” Finrod rasps, his eyes falling closed. His breathing comes in strained, wheezing gasps. “I have to leave my body behind and… return back to the West.” The sound that leaves him is filled with sorrow. “I doubt we shall meet again.”

“Still I remain indebted to you,” Beren whispers, trying to reign in his shaking voice. “Never will I forget all that you have done for me to help with this fateful quest.” He pauses, then, quiet as the rustling leaves of willows, “I hold your oath fulfilled, King Felagund.”

Finrod exhales, a quiver tumbling down his lips. “Thank you,” he groans as he struggles to turn to look at Beren and open his eyes. Their light is dimming, bleeding out and getting absorbed in the darkness of their prison. He coughs, scarlet drops clinging to his lips. “Farewell, my friend. I pray that you remember me in your thoughts.”

“I will,” Beren swears reverently as he leans down to press a kiss to Finrod’s blood-stained cheek.

He turns to look Beren in the face, his eyes glowing with otherworldly resolve. Beren holds his breath as Felagund’s fingers wrap around his wrist with a final squeeze. “Never lose hope,” he forces out through the blood in his throat.

Tears well in Beren’s eyes at the words. “I make no promise I cannot keep.”

One last shadow of pain passes over Finrod’s face and he lifts his hand to touch Beren’s face, but it lands in his lap, lifeless and covered with blood.

For a long time, Beren stares at Finrod’s unmoving body, tears streaming down his face in silent grief. The growling of Thû’s beasts and the cries of his captives fade out and into the background, as if fading away. He keeps slipping into an endless void until he is enveloped in a capsule of silence and stillness.

Little regard does he have for the growling of werewolves as they leave the stronghold, and even less for their whimpers as they perish in Huan’s jaws. He is the very soul of numbness.

And then he hears Tinúviel sing, her song unraveling the stones of Thû’s fortress. He turns his head to the door, stirred out of his stupor by the voice of his beloved. With hope in his heart, he waits.

The cell door opens and she wraps her arms around him, her grace washing over him and renewing his resolve. Beren lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding and collapses into Lúthien’s embrace, relieved. The nightmare is over.

At least for now.


End file.
